Before starting Astro, we worked as leaders at the same company, Jacqueline in sales and Frank in engineering. As we built our teams, we found it was very hard to compete against top tech companies for talent. Therefore, we broadened our search beyond Austin, Texas.
We ended up working with various partners in Latin America because of the strong talent pool, great English, and US friendly time zones. However, finding and retaining engineering teams in Latin America was a challenge. We loved our teammates, but were never thrilled about the outsourcing firms they worked for. Because they weren’t our employees, we couldn’t control what they were being paid, couldn’t give them benefits and perks, and the only visibility we had was the $150/hr bill we got from the outsourcing company. How much of that actually went to the team?
Because traditional outsourcing firms tend to attract non-tech clients and their culture revolves around billable hours, our team members were also unsatisfied with the outsourcing company that they worked for. Freelancing could be an alternative, but is also difficult for teams in Latin America due to its inherent risk and likelihood of being treated as a second-class contractor on a foreign team rather than a first-class stakeholder.
We were stuck with three uncomfortable options: outsource the entire product, manage a large team of independent freelancers, or rely on an outsourcing company to create our engineering culture.
What we really wanted were our own teams, including our own offices, equipment, salaries, benefits, etc. But setting up a foreign entity and knowing how to hire in foreign markets was a distraction and difficult—not to mention payroll, benefits, procurement, legal compliance, etc.
We ultimately went to work at different companies, but continued to experience the same pain points at our new companies. Finally, in 2018, after commiserating many times over beers, we decided to build the company we kept looking for, a company to automatically handle all of these international complexities.
We originally called ourselves Austin Software and we started by building teams by hand for startups in Austin, Texas. Then, we started to realize we had gotten good at solving lots of problems on behalf of teams in the US: sourcing Macbooks, finding competitive local benefits and perks, legal compliance, even organizing happy hours, travel and SWAG. Our idea was to productize what we’d learned and make it available to other companies. We got tired of explaining that we build teams, not bill project hours! So we built Astro (“Austin Software Tool for Recommendations and Opportunities” :))
You can think of Astro as something like a love child between Toptal + Gusto + WeWork + Amazon (the latter because of the logistics we do — more on that below), tailored specifically for software engineering teams in LATAM. Unlike Toptal or Turing, we fulfill local benefits, equipment, even team-building events. Our pricing is also transparent, in contrast to companies that charge by the hour, upfront fees, or handcuff you to long-term contracts. Customers review and pay for 1) the developer’s desired salary, 2) benefits and taxes, and 3) our 15% management fee on a week-to-week basis.
Here’s one example of the kind of thing we take care of. A 16 inch M1 Macbook Pro is not just a perk in Latin America, they actually save countless hours when dealing with heavy dev environments. But they’re difficult to source in Latin America, especially outside of the handful of major cities. And even if they are sourced, they’re extremely expensive, especially if they know you’re an American company, and getting them to teammates across South America runs the risk of theft or damage. We solve this by having local entities, local logistics, local distribution and secure local offices.
We’re proud of the fact that developers in Latin America have a much better experience working with us. That’s because our customers (i.e. the companies using Astro) are looking to scale their engineering departments with long-term stakeholders, not temporary “horsepower”, and also because real tech culture (the sort of thing devs in Silicon Valley take for granted) is a huge draw for developers, but nearly impossible to find via outsourcing shops, and very hit-and-miss on Toptal/Turing.
We hope you’ll try us out! Visit https://www.TryAstro.com, and configure your desired team (See video tutorial and screenshots below if you're just curious). Astro will source, pre-vet, schedule interviews, send offer letters, manage employment contracts, and coordinate equipment, office space, and SWAG. Once that’s set up, you can use Astro to manage your team on an ongoing basis: salaries, bonuses, additional benefits, perks, equipment, etc.
Check out some screenshots here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/17qYsZLKrhPdE1Ud1LA5A... and a video tutorial here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmiVOVfbHFI
We’d love to hear your feedback and we’re excited to answer any questions!
Both have accounts in the US which you can pay directly if you don't want to deal with wire transfers (though those also are easy). Both handle taxes.
Basically that's the price range a senior developer can make on his own remoting on platforms like toptal - there's no buffer there for the agency cut unless they are some partnership or losing money to catch clients.
And best case scenario - they have decent devs available at those prices right now - it's likely they will figure out what I've said and cut out the middle man/work for some US client directly and get a 30% bump for little effort.
Our teammates weren't satisfied with the outsourcing company and didn't like being interleaved between projects (formally or informally). And with negotiating down lower rates, the clients they tended to attract weren't exactly tech companies, which was uninspiring for our latam teammates.
We believe that by providing a platform that lets tech companies provide a premium developer experience, similar to the "Silicon Valley engineering culture", we can provide access to teammates that aren't typically found on Toptal/Turing nor at the typical outsourcing firm.
While the others seem to care about cost-cutting to catering to their customers, you seem to also care about the developers, and this is a breath of fresh air. I hope many of my friends in Colombia will benefit from your initiative.
The idea of extending Silicon Valley level perks is the one that works in the long term. I wish you and the developers all the success.
Coming from eastern europe, such sweatshops usually pay local salaries and attract junior people. If you have experience and ain't afraid of talking to clients... You cut the middleman and work with foreign clients directly.
For example, I worked with teams in Brazil in the past and while they were smart, kind, etc they were slow in every sense of the word. They didn't have the US culture of respond quickly, unblock people, get shit done, etc. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, in fact working slower may be a benefit, but the US company needs to understand this as they establish the relationship.
Your pricing makes sense, but I would like to understand some kind of ballpark numbers based on role title. Can you share that?
As far as the "unlbock people, get shit done, etc..." I think that's the case with a lot of outsourced work in general and I don't think it has anything to do with Brazilian culture. Outsourced labor are used to being treated like cogs in a machine so they are less likely to take the initiative or speak up when they see something that doesn't make sense.
The only thing that took me by surprise is that Brazilians DO NOT take well to getting busy outside of working hours. If you text someone during their lunch break, expect to hear a complaint along with your response.
Were you indexing against Bay salaries or US median/average?
I'm sure there are reasons, but your pricing isn't truly transparent until I can find it from the homepage, without signing up for an account. Should I have to sign up with my burner/spam email address just to access that?
Edit: I'm not able to find the pricing even after creating an account. This isn't a great user experience for someone trying to figure out how much the platform might cost (and I'm actually in the market for this kind of thing)
Pricing-wise, I'd say the all-in fees on a per dev basis are comparable to a developer's salary here in the US (Austin, TX), the fees are all inclusive of benefits, tech equipment, offices, perks, etc...
When you decide to make an offer to someone, you'll get a break down of 1) the teammates's personal salary requirement), 2) the benefits and taxes and, 3) our management fee.
Because we don't set the rates, the candidates do (just like in the US), it's hard to say exactly what the price will be, it depends on the individual's requirements.
That said, we can def offer guidance on what the market tends to be!
Well, then as a USA based org, I'd have to say - what's the point? If it's comparable to a USA dev Salary, what savings/arbitrage/win a I achieving here? Wouldn't it be easier for a USA based company to just corp 2 corp/1099 or such someone onshore, then offshore and have a middle man?
We send the rate with each developer. We don't have a flat rate; otherwise, that means we set the rate. The developers set their own rate and we send that over with their profiles after you state what you're looking for and who in our platform is a match.
What's a better way of going about this?
"Ser" vs "estar" is one of those hair-pulling verbs with one "simple" rule and a hundred exceptions.
¿En qué países están la mayor parte de sus trabajadores?
Gracias!
We do a few things 1) Astro provides a standard set of benefits and perks, this tends to attract companies with great culture, 2) Because Astro isn't a project-for-hire platform, this also attracts companies that need long-term teammates, and 3) the Astro team isn't scared to provide insight to companies on how to best retain their international teammates; salary reviews, career paths, meaningful local perks, and time off. We know that professionals in LATAM have lots of options.
See my email in my profile so I can tell you more about how to join the platform!
For example, the way customers pay is : 1) Customers pay for the developer's salary "en mano", which is specified by the developer, not us, 2) Customers pay for a standard benefits package and taxes (Health insurance, education, equipment etc.) and 3) Customers pay our 15% management fee (charged to the customer, not the developer)
That setup, of course, may not work for everyone, but we do have great companies, companies whose names we would recognize, that feel more comfortable using a US business entity that they can sign contracts with to move specialized equipment, like locked down macbooks, installing special software on work equipment, or specialized local network equipment, etc.. These companies have physical security requirements that makes it tough for them to directly hire freelancers. Thus we bring those kinds of opportunities to our teammates that would be otherwise localized only certain US cities.
There are great people everywhere, but in my view, it's been much harder to source good people from Latam than it is from Eastern Europe or South Asia.
In my experience the real risk with remote teams isn't really technical, it's possible to find great people everywhere. The real risk is human: communication, courage, culture, yes even timezones. And you mentioned that Latam overlaps more in culture!
That being said there's a lot of amazing developers in India that are open to working US-work hours for max collaboration
What I'd love to know is how did you get 50+ US start up to use your services? How did you compete/or reach out to the folks who are directly involved in vetting outsourcing firms to use your services and not the industrial standard TCS/Accenture/Wipro - who dominate the space.
I do want to start an outsourcing agency one day but getting the client to choose my firm over the rest is what gets me.
The biggest advantage we had in getting started was trust. Also in the beginning, we didn't quite start out with our grand vision. We picked up PM work and projects and miscellaneous things here and there, but slowly that expanded our network of people who previously worked with us. We asked all these early customers for introductions to other teams. Overall it took us 3 years.
Is there something you could do to generate a working relationship with your prospects that leads to trust?
What tips/resource would you have to gain into the market to secure work at US corporation who work with Accenture/Wipro/TCS firms? What makes them 'approved list of contractors' to get work done as hiring is absolute pain the US and slow, along with talent shortage. We, currently, do not have a network that have higher reaches in firms. Currently, we are only able to secure smaller contracts via freelancing website, e.g. Elance, Freelancer, etc.
You have a screen: https://i.imgur.com/dRVwqZ2.png
What if a profile doesn't match that?
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When looking for a "scrum master" <--- Define Scum Master?
How am I to then evaluate who ends up in said bucket... but If I select a bucket, how can I be known to the guy who heavily sides on scrum master (in your bucket) but they are really a talented [OTHER] bucket that doesnt show up with my check-box clicks?
If one selects a bucket chexBox: HIGHLIGHT they other check boxes where a candidate is ALSO purview of
So if I have a realtion to X, but I also have a weight to XYZ then show that...
Inversely correlating me:
I know X and I also know Y. but my affinity is more to Y than X, but I still know Y.
The Bill Hicks Algo.
I used to do C, but I now know Java, But I still used to do C also....
This should be an open repo for job descriptions....
Before the pandemic, all the good software development jobs were attached to big cities, and hardly any company accepted remote work. What would happen in many instances, is that companies from outside latam would pay a lot for relocating them (and their families) to other countries, commonly to US, Canada, Spain, Germany and UK - however a portion of those devs come back because there is a lot of value living in the countryside/smaller cities of latam when you have kids, it ends up with a better quality of life overall.
In the end those professionals (usually already seniors) open local companies to work as a contractor for their previous employer or any other company that accepts remote work and can pay invoices overseas, this way they end up keeping a high salary (especially when you consider the exchange rates) and the perks of working from home.
How would you hire/contact those professionals? Usually I get a lot of local agencies trying to contact me to work for outside, but offering local salaries, which makes absolutely no sense. In other words, how do you differentiate from Accenture/Thoughtworks or any other consultancy to hire the engineers?
These kinds of companies don't typically use Thoughworks to develop their own product, but are willing to accept international logistical help to find and manage their own teammates.
And to answer your question, top tech companies aren't usually price sensitive and are willing to pay for top talent. Because of our transparency in our fees, everyone knows what everyone is making and it's the developer who sets their own rate.
How'd you deal with that?
The challenge with Venezuela and Argentina is that you cannot pay developers in local currency, otherwise they'd be losing a truckload of revenue (e.g. Argentina is heavily taxed for remote workers and the official exchange rate for foreign money received is too low compared to the parallel/blackmarket exchange rate).
I'm happy to discuss specific problems (my Twitter handle is open to DMs).
Also, cryptocurrency. Ironically enough.
And yes, I meant "tax evasion", not "tax avoidance". "Tax evasion" the illegal version of the topic.
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[0]: https://maxifirtman.medium.com/gu%C3%ADa-definitiva-para-cob... (in Spanish)
How does this differ from companies like remote.com? Does it work in Brazil?
Will you focus on "teaching" companies that it is OK to hire in Latin America? I feel that besides payment the biggest struggles are:
* Trust - the distrust was clear about several things from people "disappearing" to legal fears of hiring in Latin America
* Language - also a trust issue,
* Technical proficiency, companies treat developers as if they are less efficient or less informed (even if you show cases).
How are you going to work on these issues to convince companies to start hiring and using your platform?
I ask this because the hardest part was not finding devs, but all points above. With several clients even vetting developers from Latin America just because they prefer if they were in Canada and/or Mexico.
It is a real barrier I dealt with several times.
Our best shot at convincing companies to use us is to point to the large engineering departments that are already trusting us to expand their engineering departments in Latam.
Or... They will already have developers in Latin America and already have a solution to hiring here overall.
I'm curious about whether you tried to find developers in the US but not in Austin or one of the big tech hubs. Or have you found that most of the good US-based developers head for the tech hubs? (Even if that were true before, surely it's different post-pandemic.)
I'm not opposed to hiring good people wherever they are. But some of the challenges discussed above go away when hiring domestically. And, based on the comment elsewhere on this thread about working with companies that recognize the value of good people and are willing to pay above market rate, I gather that the point of hiring in Latam wasn't to be cheap.
At the time, hiring domestically vs internationally, wasn't a mutually exclusive decision. A team that really needs to hire fast to, say, launch a new revenue feature, needs to be expanding the top of the funnel of good people in all locations simultaneously.
So we ended up with a mix of teammates in Austin and in Colombia, and crucially, we did our best to make us all feel like one product team working for one company.
When you hired in Colombia, and when you hire in Latam now for Astro customers, do you bring a bunch of people together in a physical office, or do they work from home?
That's our hope anyway!
We can even coordinate travel and off site retreats to really help the team feel like one. Finally, our platform keeps US companies accountable for things like regular salary reviews and career paths. All the perks in the world won't matter if that's not in place.
Just curious, of all the ways you might get this off the ground, what tipped the scales in favor of VC funding? Personally, it’s hard for me to imagine this becoming a Reddit-sized operation (perhaps I lack imagination) and really easy to imagine your funders pushing you to pivot when you’re not growing 10X YoY or whatever.
Did you think about incorporating as a non-profit?
The company is only as big as the need for employing great devs worldwide. We may not be a consumer known product, but we hope to help lots of companies and devs for many years to come! Also, we've been very careful to not give up control so the company would never be forced into pivoting against our mission!
You went from 0 to 4 paying customers?
In fact, on our platform we've seen some companies not only provide stock options but some even pay US level wages, or significantly above local market to entice professionals to join their teams.
The companies that provide these kinds of offers don't fit in the traditional outsourcing models. We believe Astro fits them better to attract talent that isn't accessible with the more traditional channels.
The more I read your responses, the more I believe this could be a net good with a more healthy attitude towards working in Latin America. Cheers and good luck!
Edit: by the way, do you facilitate sourcing talent for companies operating or building within Latin America?
People kept thinking that Austin Software was a product outsourcing firm, i.e. they kept asking us for quotes or rate cards, etc. So to avoid confusion we built Astro, which is a UX over our team building infrastructure.
In the mean time, I'm happy to setup you up on my end. Would you mind emailing me? You can find my email in my profile.
Is it possible to use your logistics without your sourcing? Frankly I think I'm better at finding the best combination of skillset and personalities for the project I want to use than you or any other staffing service. However a lot of the developers I find are hesitant to jump through the hoops to start their own company and receive international payments.
Aren’t I making my business extraordinarily vulnerable to an unpredictable early-stage startup? How is that better than hiring/contracting through a mature overseas staffing agency in Mumbai, Kviv, or Buenos Aires? I mean, there are thousands of the latter, many with great history and references, and I don’t see what you’re adding besides risk and branding.
Regarding VC influence, we actually bootstrapped the company in 2018, and we've had to build a profitable self sustaining business from the get-go. So we don't have the "court the next VC round" problem and given that we've built a sustainable and growing business, we're don't want pivot away from that either, but I see where you are coming from.
And yes, there are plenty of international staffing agencies to choose from, but keep in mind that their reputation in the US is only part of the equation. Among international developers, these staffing agencies may have a different reputation. We believe that by using us, companies can provide their teammates with the kinds of experiences that attract a different pool of professionals otherwise unreachable through overseas staffing agencies.
Having tried this setup and having dealt with middlemen (eg. Pilot) and not, I can't say I noticed much difference with dealing with self employed.
Especially if the team members are senior, they're likely to know the ropes of setting up business in their country.
That said, hiring from Latin American has its challenges - the language barrier is not easy to overcome and the political instability can take a toll on your friends and coworkers (especially in these trying times).
I think that a few freelancers are manageable (not sure if that applies to you!) But we've noticed companies that are managing engineering departments with ~50 or more and growing quickly really benefit. At that point both the HR and engineering department need something like logistics partner on the ground to coordinate meaningful benefits, specialized equipment (test devices, locked down laptops), help with company events, etc.
The extras provided here in Astro with the office, swag, perks, and vetting is very intriguing and certainly puts this a couple up in my book.
A former company I worked for hired some excellent Central American developers through a company, and I later learned those guys had all signed contracts that made them give more than half their salary to the outsourcing company for two years, and if they wanted to leave before the end of two years, they had to pay a lump sum that was about a year's salary.
All we ask is that if a company builds a team using Astro, they don't try to cut us out, similar to the terms that other platforms have.
We’re proud of the fact that developers in Latin America have a much better experience working with us. That’s because our customers (i.e. the companies using Astro) are looking to scale their engineering departments with long-term stakeholders, not temporary “horsepower”, and also because real tech culture (the sort of thing devs in Silicon Valley take for granted) is a huge draw for developers, but nearly impossible to find via outsourcing shops, and very hit-and-miss on Toptal/Turing.
We believe our approach gives teams access to teammates that are otherwise unreachable on platforms like Toptal, etc. and traditional outsourcing/staffing firms.
We found really great teammates, who spoke great english. We also loved the US timezones, it was possible to be more responsive to our US customers.
And finally, I was surprised at how much overlap in culture we had as software deveopers. For example pop culture like movies, shows, video games, anime, music, etc.
It was a really good fit!
TopTal changed that way to have better-motivated people, who want to work anywhere, so your idea is to step back.
LatAm is a big place and I don't read Spanish or Portuguese so I expect finding the info will be challenging. Levels.fyi has only Brazil, lists salaries in local currency, and has no info for DevOps engineers. Glassdoor lists large bands. For example, the bands for DevOps Engineer are USD 18k-75k in Rio de Janeiro and USD 14k-25k in Belo Horizonte. Glassdoor's salary bands don't account for English skills.
